As The Snowfly Watches Over Thee
by Malice Shaw
Summary: Snowfly, what are they truely? Do they still seek what they so yearn? Or are they trapped forever in humming bodies, forever chained to immortality?


As The Snowfly Watches Over Thee   
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He pressed the soft fallen petals from the newly bloomed rose to his cheek, lavishing in the smell of it's sweet perfume as it engulfed his senses. Just freshly plucked and dripping with dew, the tiny droplets of water ran down his face to his chin, then down to his neck leaving an icy cool imprint behind. It trickled down into his shirt, and tickled his skin with its water like tongue, lapping a way until it dissipated into nothing, causing the child to laugh. 

A romantic sound, she thought, her mind awrath of the boy's voice. It was a calm, soothing laughter, a laugh that some would cast off as nothing until they truely listened, and noticed the lost innocense in his voice. Long gone and lost were his family, his friends, becoming the flying insects the boy adored so much. Most of them fell upon the ground as dust in the winds, their bodies breaking apart into a firey dusk as their kingdom fell down upon them in a sea of ash and hell, fire and brimstone occuring when the followers of Mullenkamp's decent failed to see how such an evil city, a city of sin could live on. 

**(**"_Power corrupts,_" he once whispered in her ear, on the rare times he would look at her with out eyes of distain. "_Power corrupts absolutely._"**)**

She shook the thought from her head, reddish strands falling about her face in a perfect frame. Once adorned by the colour of midnight, sections revealed her former coloure edging in roots that graced her head. The hood of her overcoat covered her body warmly, locking out the frigid cold of the high mountains. Daintily lighte flies flew about the boy's golden head, entwining in his hair as he danced mercilessly on the ground, shrieking with laughter as if controlling the flies with out abandon, and prancing upon their light as they smiled on his head. 

If she was not who she was borne to, bred to be, she would have loved the pure, the sweet, the innocent sight. 

"Child!" She hissed bitterly, annoyed with his happiness. "Thou has enough time of his own. We must depart. Soon." 

Silently the boy stopped dead center, his once joy filled eyes giving her a cold, discontent stare. "Please.." He begged, a whimper cradling the cold air. "Please, can't I stay a bit longer? please!" 

Begging did not suit him at all. The winds turned cold once more around her, encasing her with an icy chill as if an Omen demanded she heed the boy's words. A curt nod and a biting remark caused the boy to whoop with joy, rushing back to the only blooming plants in the forest that demanded his attention with their proud petals, blooming, forever blooming. 

She had always hated this place, it's flight of fancy wording, peacefully beautiful yet sullenly feaful all the same. The Snowfly Forest, they claimed, was haunted by the ghosts of the past and soon to be, the Mullenkamp tribe placing it as their new home to ward of visitors and enemies alike. Yet always the spirits were wrongly accused of heinous actions, with in contingent of her and the child, civil, and charming, surrounding them with as much warmth as their tiny bodies could accumilate. They spread open their arms and allowed them in, forming a delicate path of unbeating wings to allow them out when they wished to be set free. 

"The Graveyard of Mullenkamp's descendants." She murmered to no one in particular. Holding out a hand a small fly dropped to her fingers, gazing up at her with flipant wings and dark black eyes. "Who are you, little one, to be here? What magick and trickery caused your mind to be entranced by her floating scarves?" 

With a tiny nod of it's head the fly left her palm and scurried upwards, joining it's dopplegangers to form light in the darkening forest. She still wondered, who was that tiny being in it's life, and if it indeed remembered who it was before the transaction of man or woman into insect took place. 

Again the boy's currowing laughter filled the air, as the winds died down to welcome them once more. Lighted flies of fancy danced around his head, forming a conservative halo in a greeting full of love and trust, every once in a while a simgle fly, always the same one, dipping down to give a tender peck upon his cheek, and a tiny tickling bite. Concerned, she stepped in to snatch the fly from midair, breaking the harmonious circle that the child pranced in to stare mournfully, almost angrily, at the bug who dared to nip at his tender cheek. 

"Your former life, I care not." She growled into the fly's non existant features, spitting venom with her words. "Do _not_ taketh it out on the child's cheek!" 

With that she let the fly go, watching the halo form once again around the boy's body, protecting him seemingly from all evils. Coldly she stared, watching him make aquitances with these gifted creatures, staring around her for fear a juvilant coward would reach forth with a strict finger proclaiming witchery. Enchanting the dead, he would say, and the child would be lost forever once more. She let her mind wander, as the child danced with his make shift halo of lighted bodies of the dead, and pondered about the deaths lost, of Ashley, of his where abouts and impersonations. Yes, she knew of his now tainted back, the mark of Sin imbedded into his skin, fresh and new, sightings of him becoming fewer and fewer over the past year. She searched, yes, she searched, for the Riskbreaker, but was bleak, on her findings and of any other information she could concieve. 

Perhaps he joined his family in the fields of gold where his heart ached once more to venture, to hold them against his chest and kiss her hair as tenderly as he once did.. 

**(**"_Reinforcements?"_ He hissed with venom. _"I _am_ the reinforcements"_**)**

Such a cold, harsh, unbelievable man.. Who was he to seek his maker, the destroyer of all he lived for, and when upon finding it, fight it with all his will.. 

And stain his back with the mark of Sin.. 

"Dance, dance!" The boy's voice chided sweetly, interrupting her thoughts with his laughing as the snowflies did his bidding. They pranced around him like a cocoon, filling his eyes with their shining light with the glowing embers of the deceased. 

Her crimson tinted lips could not help but smile at his charm, so charismatic and delusional. Much like his brother had been, before he too joined the many deaths at the hand of Mullenkamp's descent. The Sin, ripped horrifyingly from his back, skinned alive just so the power could be passed upon to Romeo caused her to get nausious. Remembering the poor man-boy, so young yet so old hurt her painfully, for she would remember his best friend as well. Both faded into the abyss of light, dotted fairies of death falling back here, to rest forever in this forest, this tomb of trees and bushels. 

He was a good man, no doubt about thee. His passing brought much more pain than she first though. She didn't even know she was silently crying until she looked downwards and saw her teardrop from her chin into her clasped hands. 

"Hardin.." She whispered, low so that the child would not hear. Hardin was the epitamy of a tortured soul, and when she saw the past reflections of his wrong doings, which in his mind, his heart, he thought his death could only make right, she felt for him. Truely, deeply felt for him, for the last time she shed a tear was when his remains lifted into the air as fireflies, heading to their new home. Here. 

Here.. 

"Hardin, has thou finallt given thyself peace?" She asked the glowing flies as they covered the child. As she expected they ignored her questions, instead concentrating on the child's delighted shouts of joy and rapture. He was always concetrating on them, always loved them to the fullest extent, always _alive_ around them speaking to them as if they had voices that spoke beyond their flying graves. That was what they truely were. 

Insectified coffins, she thought bitterly. 

Even the word itself was ugly, the opposite of what the snowflies truely were. 

Beautiful... 

"Joshua, let us depart." She murmered, lifteda hand to grasp his. "Enough now, here." 

The boy sighed, waving a flippant, yet regal hand to the surrounding light bugs "G'bye! G'bye Hardin! G'bye Sydney! G'bye Daddy!" 

She froze then, hearing the names she once longed to rub from her mind, yet they etched in, deeper now, from the child's lips. "Wha.. What do you speak of, Joshua?" She asked him. "Why do you say _their_ names?" 

Joshua looked up at her and smiled, his waiflike grin holding fast and sharp. "I come here to see my brother and his friend, Hardin! Daddy too, but I don't see him here. Sydney tells me of him, though!" 

A hushed warmness fell about her, and she kneeled to face him, eye to eye. "Why do you speak their names as if they can hear you? They are dead, child, gone into the great beyond where sweet ambrosia is their wine." She murmered, borrowing a line from the begotten Riskbreaker. "They cannot hear you through the tiny bodies of these insects." 

"They can!" Joshua chirped, flittering his arms wildly in a tantrum. "They do! I wouldn't come here if'n they couldn't! Why don't you believe me?" 

Childlike fantasies, where the light is always the brightest at dawn. Where fairies are always beautiful and the time honored tradition of pleasantries is constant and over bearing. Things, material things, no longer casualties for your pleasure but needed with a wanton earnest for you to live full and proud. Was that what it was like to be a child? 

Or this child, above all? 

"I believe you, Joshua." The woman murmered, giving him her best smile and hoping he did not see how strained it was. 

"I knew you would!" Joshua gleamed, smiling proudly. He continued in his sing song voice, becoming fainter by the moment. "I knew it, I knew it.." 

Taking his hand once more in her own, she half dragged him away from his fantic wavings, through the lighted maze the snowflies panned out for their walk. Soon the child's voice rang in, chatning on and on of what he had spoken with his 'brother' and his 'brother's friend' that day. A simple curt nod would always suffice, until his lips opened with a simple sentence that brought her from her reverie. 

"Callo, Hardin says he misses you." Joshua chirped. "And he says that he is now able to rest." 

A slight intake of breath cause Callo's heart to freeze in it's time, the beats pounding painfully against her ribcage. The sound echoed into her ears and into her brain as she cast a look into the charming blue eyes of Joshua, as he innocently gazed up wards at her. "Rest?" She scoffed. "What do you speak of?" 

"Hardin told me you wanted him to have peace." Joshua smiled, the sweet curve of his lips proving him to be wise beyond his years. "And he does. But he wishs you ddin't throw him so hard. He just wanted to kiss my cheek for good luck. Yours too." He frowned. "But you slapped him away." 

Callo choked on her breath and kept walking, faster now, the urge to run from the flying and buzzing of the snowflies around her escalating into an adrenaline rush of fear. Gripping Joshua's hand tighter she closed her eyes when the winds began to whisper, pounding into her ears like large drums beaten with wooden oars. The memories she buried inside her head refused to stay under the dirt, uprising like the living dead, graspong her, holding her, pressing her down as they kissed her and made her one of their own, all the while- 

**(**_...callo..._**)**

-the winds whispered her name, over and over while her mind was ravaged with yesterday. Yesterday, they cried to her, chanting with scowls of pain and love, yesterday, when she pressed teh reddest of fruit into a bowl to turn her ebony locks a glistening crimson. To hide, to hide from the searching eyes, wondering stares. To hide from them, ignore them as long as they could, even proclaming her name to be not what it was, not the truth. To hide her and the boy from the eyes, from everyone.. 

**(**_...merlose..._**) **

Neesa was the first. Her body, found gagged to stop her screams. Eccentric claw marks being the cause of her dead. A tattoo of Sin, burned into her skin. 

Others were the next. Some she knew, some she didn't. Some Riskbrakers. All dead and gone. 

**(**_...and the innocent's blood will wash me clean..._**)**

Callo stopped running them, a calm euphoric feeling her. A small snowfly perched itself upon her shoulder and walked the small line to her neck, fluttering it's wings against her bare skin, as if to whisper her name once more, and plead for her ears. 

**(**_...fear does not become you, Merlose..._**)**

**(**_...be strong..._**)**

**(**_...be careful..._**)**

**(**_...i will always protect you..._**)**

With that, it's wings fluttered once more and she left the forest, her calm senses hushed by the tiny tingly feeling that still graced her neck. Her hands loosened on Joshua's, and he gazed up at her with a look of worry in his bright blue eyes, swirling cerulean.. 

"Callo?" 

"Yes?" 

"Are you pleased?" 

And she was. She was, for she knew, she and the child would be leaving the forest for the very last time. 

Behind them, a small surbudinate of snowflies still circled in their own makeshift halo of protection, atop the transparent woman's hand. She smiled sadly, her sleek scarves floating in the breeze their tiny wings beat, causing an illustrious surreal effect of etherealism, as the mark of sin burned into her skin. Unseen to the naked eye, she gingerly stroked the wings of one small fly, nustling against it quietly with a single smile and a chirp, before placing her tender, crimson red and delicate lips to it's tiny little ears.. 

**(**_..."snow flies were created," _she murmered to no one in particular, except the tiny little insect that held his place upon her delicate finger_ "by i, yes, by i, so that they could not venture forth into God's heaven, but stay, in this Purgatory, to watch, and continue to learn..._**)**

With that the snowfly gazed at her serenly, facing the way it's former brother had pressed on and sighed sadly, understanding the words it had longed for all it's life, knowing full well the boy Joshua and the woman, Callo Merlose, would never return. 

**(**_...the child could never keep to his own senses...._**)**

Sensing the tiny heart's grief, the woman smiled into it's eyes and blew him in the air as she stood up and danced, the halo forming once more to illuminate her bronze features. Motioning for the flies to light the way, the tiny snowfly bows it's head to it's Goddess, and carried on it's way, relishing in the freedom that his broken soul was granted. 

And Mullenkamp nodded, her perpetual smile as she recited the old hymm to carry him safely on his journey, an old tale she had created just for the splitting of the body and the soul, just so the snowflies, her precious gifts, could understand... 

**(**_...When one time we were whole..._**)**

**(**_...We split into pieces our delicate soul..._**)**

**(**_...Sometimes it's our eyes, watching you..._**)**

**(**_...Other times our hands to see you through..._**)**

**(**_...Only one piece is shared, nay torn apart..._**)**

**(**_...We share the pieces of our heart..._**) **

**(**_...So as the snowfly watches over thee..._**)**

**(**_...With no hands to touch, nor eyes to see..._**)**

**(**_...Forever in death, we soar above..._**)**

**(**_...All in the sake of perpetual love..._**)**

And Mullenkamp playfully laughed, dancing to the hum of a multitude of unbeating wings. 

~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~   
Please R&R. Due to the factoid this is my first Vagrant Story oneshot, anyone who reviews and leaves an email (whether signed or not) will get an email from me saying thanks for your support. I'm a feedback whore. I know. I'm sorry. 


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